This page contains the meditations and a summary of discussion from the “Embracing Failure – turning failure into success” study day held in the Chapel of the RNI on Friday the 23rd August.
Practice 1 – Deep relaxing body scan – a 35minute body scan intended to relax body and mind before posing the key question of the day “How do we define failure and/or success”.
Practice 2 – Mindful breathing and impermanence – a 31minute practice in which we settle into awareness of our breathing and allow ourselves to feel whatever arises in our mind irrespective of whether it is positive or negative. We experience whatever arises including the concepts of success and failure and begin to realise that everything is always changing and nothing is permanent.
Practice 3 – Caught in conceptual proliferation – a 21minute practice in which we view concepts of success and failure as part of the web of conceptual proliferation that is generated by the processes of the mind when we are unable to rest the mind and not allow thoughts, feelings and emotions to dissipate.
Summary of the morning’s discussion – where do the concepts of success and failure come from and why do we make such judgements?
Practice 4 – Integrating mind and body – the no separation body scan. A 33minute body scan in which we seek to integrate the mind with the body, to see how that leads the mind away from conceptual proliferation and begins to dissolve the boundaries between self and other. Practised because success and failure are caught up in the illusion of self and tend to reinforce the illusion of separation.
Practice 5 – Releasing ourselves from the prison of self – a 31minute practice in which we look at how the sense of self, in which the concepts of success and failure are embedded, acts to prevent us seeing clearly and tends to keep us trapped in conceptual proliferation. As we allow ourselves to be released from the self we can realise that nothing needs to be done, that everything will change by itself and all that is necessary to gain freedom is to stop struggling and come to rest.
